Does Obama Really Want To Cut Execs' Pay?

Oct. 22, 2009

On the one hand, the Wall Street executives who are going to have their salaries cut from millions of dollars a year to no more than $200k should be happy. After all, Barack Obama promised no tax increases for those earning less than $250,000 a year, right? Sure!
On the other hand, the president may want to reconsider. With tax revenue dropping like an offed mafioso's car a river, he may need that revenue. Better idea, Mr. President: Instead of cutting their pay 90 percent, let them keep them million-dollar salaries — then tax it at 90 percent. After all, you have to fund health care, right? Plus, the stimulus and free college education and end global warming and green jobs and . . . .

But before you do, Mr. President, would you please find out if it's constitutional for the federal government to fire and set salaries of people in private business? If it is, then watch out students on federal loans. Next, you'll be told where you can go to college and what classes to take.

Nat Hentoff better watch it. The well known pro-life, but liberal, columnist (see here) now is after radical leftist campus enforcers of political correctness who are attempting to silence a 48-year distinguished history professor at Brandeis University — the college named after the U.S. Supreme Court justice known for his fierce defence of free speech. Hentoff recently chastised Democrats for their abortion on demand platform (see our comment here). Invites to swanky parties attended by liberal elites assuredly will evaporate from his mailbox. Hentoff, though, has consistently exposed such hypocritical fanatics.
Again, we've been prescient. After several posts on this topic, Hentoff's nationally syndicated column today addresses an incident that truly defies credulity: Brandeis History Professor Donald Hindley, who has taught there for 48 years with not a complaint on his record, was teaching class one day in his course on Latin American politics. At one point he made a historically accurate, albeit sad, fact that some Americans used to call Mexican immigrants "wetbacks." Mind you, he wasn't calling Mexicans that. He wasn't apologizing for that fact. He simply stated an unfortunate truth in the context of teaching his class.

A student complained, the administration took offence and now Professor Hindley may be on the verge of losing his job. Instead of explaining to the student the facts of life and being an adult, the university provost is on a child-like rant himself. But, the scary thing is, he has real authority, complete with reprimands, demands and threats to Professor Hindley. It's as if you cannot say, "Blacks once were slaves in America." How can we educate young people, much less publicly discuss important issues as a nation, if we're not even allowed to accurately teach history?! He made a simple statement of fact. But liberal extremism not only wants to stifle free speech, it wants to whitewash history, a history you'd think they want exposed so we don't repeat terrible mistakes. Read today's column by Hentoff here. Rather than rare, occurrences such as this are much more rampant on campuses than widely realized.

As terrible as this horrible twin scourge of whitewashing history and restriction of free speech, there is one thing sadder: The ruination of a man's reputation. But that's not of consequence for America's Animal Farm gang — anything, anything at all, to advance their addled, lockstep ideology.